Duck catching rays at Ballast Point

Watery Wednesday #65: Tiptoeing through the oysters - Little Blue Heron

I found another of my heron friends hunting for an afternoon snack. I wished him a lot of luck.

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world.

SKYWATCH Friday - Season 4 Episode 18

This was Tampa's sky at 3:00 this afternoon. Not even a hint of a cloud...not even a whisper. This shot, taken from Bayshore Boulevard over Hillsborough Bay toward Davis Island is as exciting as our sky will get today and probably through the weekend. After Tropical Storm Ida left the state and moved up the eastern seaboard, high level winds pushed down and over the state and took everything in the sky with it. The whole Gulf coast of Florida is left with incredibly blue, BLUE skies. (And, very near perfect weather. Thank you!!)

Visit Skywatch Friday to see the beauty and wonders of the world's most magnificent skies. It's always an amazing show brought to you by Skywatchers from all over the planet.

WATERY Wednesday #60: Little Blue Herons and their population decline

The Little Blue Heron, or the Petit Heron Bleu in French, is a waterbird I see along the shores of the bay. They are usually walking along very slowly and deliberately looking for morsels of food. (I was within 6-8 feet of the bird when I got this shot.) Although I posted about one back in July (with a crustacean of some sort in his beak), I thought I saw them with some frequency. After capturing this one, I Googled him to see what more there was of interest that I could share with you. I was surprised to discover that they are listed by the National Audubon Society as a Common Bird in Decline on a list of twenty birds. They state that the “long-term success of these herons is limited mostly by their food supply. They forage for fish, crustaceans, and frogs in shallow water in saline, brackish, and freshwater habitats, areas that are very vulnerable to declines in water quality.” The outlook for them in the southeastern United States requires “quality shallow water habitats …, so their fate depends on our protecting the quality and quantity of these habitats.” Unlike the National Audubon Society’s Watch List, they are not in immediate danger of extinction, despite the fact that their population, now at approximately 150,000 worldwide, is a 54% decline in 40 years.

According to the National Audubon Society, “Little Blue Herons breed along the Atlantic coast from southern Maine to Florida, with concentrations from South Carolina southward. Breeding across the Florida peninsula, this egret is distributed unevenly around the Gulf Coast and coastal plain, with the greatest densities in Louisiana. Little Blue Herons also breed up the Mississippi River valley into Illinois and through eastern Texas into Kansas. Wintering territory shrinks back to the warmer coasts. Little Blue Herons also occur throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and South America as far south as Uruguay…. Today, the loss of feeding habitat seems to be the greatest limiting factor for this dark heron.”

Having all this information, I think I will pay a lot more attention to the Little Blue Heron in the future and treat each sighting with a bit more awe and respect.

Click HERE to see other wet and Watery Wednesday images from around the
world.

I'm pleased to WELCOME Beth Niquette of Independence, Oregon. Beth has four blogs, but start with Expect the Unexpected HERE for spectacular photography of one of America's most beautiful and scenic places. Starting out with a love for photography and the darkroom (many of us well remember the chemicals, noxious fumes and GraLab timers), she says, "With the invention of the digital camera, I was set free to capture the amazing, unusual and the unexpected.." You'll like Beth's world.

Watery Wednesday #57

It is not raining here but as you can see from looking across the Hillsborough Bay at our city's skyline, it's hot, humid and hazy off in the distance. But, in our favor, we can enjoy the beauty of the magnificent bodies of water that surround us and the gorgeous skies that look down on us every day. A slight pinch of autumn may be in store for us this weekend (temperatures forecast to plummet into the mid 70s for a high) but we should be grateful for the near-perfect weather we can boast of to everyone already wearing winter parkas and out shoveling snow from the driveway. Sorry friends.

Click HERE to see other wet and Watery Wednesday images from around the world.

Fresh, Still-Wiggling Crab Dinner

This beautiful Florida waterbird finally found his sought-after fresh crab dinner. This is unquestionably the just-caught chef's special. (The crab still thought he might have a chance of escape.) The bird was carefully eyeing me wondering if I had designs on his selection but I'd have to wrestle the crab from that beak. No thanks. There were herons, ibis, egrets and dozens of sea gulls working this spot along the bay. You would have thought it was an All-You-Can-Eat Night at a Red Lobster restaurant.

SkyWatch FRIDAY: An award-winning performance by Tampa's clouds and brilliant blue sky.

Hillsborough Bay and the rocky shoreline made for a striking foreground to Tampa's downtown office towers, way across the water in the distance, but the clouds were really the star of this show. They billowed and puffed into indescribable shapes. Tampa's sky was on stage this afternoon and performed magnificently. A perfect day.

Do visit Skywatch Friday to see the beauty and wonders of the world's most magnificent skies. It's always an amazing show.

Biglow stands proudly on the Boulevard of Dreams

The Boulevard of Dreams, Bayshore Boulevard, stretches from Tampa’s downtown to South Tampa and Gandy Boulevard. It curves along the outline of Hillsborough Bay and is said to include the world's longest continuous sidewalk - about four and a half miles. Facing the water are magnificent homes and towering condominiums, all with an expensive and coveted view of the water, seawall and 10-foot wide ribbon of sidewalk. The Bayshore Greenway Trail, a linear park in the city’s system, is used day and night by joggers, walkers, bicyclists, skaters, plain old tourists enjoying the sunshine and view and dogs of every imaginable breed, trying to keep pace with their fitness-crazed masters. Many historic homes grace the boulevard but only one stands proudly at its start. The Biglow-Helms House. (Also spelled Bigelow, as found in the Bigelow Society website) is one and one-half stories, solidly built and sitting on a two-acre lot. Although originally set back a little further from the street, it was actually moved forward to accommodate additional structures built behind it. Used for offices and meeting spaces, its 10,000 sq. ft. was constructed in 1908 by Silas Leland Biglow, a distinguished early developer and public official in Tampa government. He served as the president of the Tampa City Council and was very active in the development of the Ybor City Building and Loan Association. In 1919, the home was purchased by Dr. John Sullivan Helms and than later by noted Tampa artist Jack Wilson, a nephew of Dr. Helms. The house is constructed of "artificial stone" made from precast concrete blocks. Very substantial and even beautiful today. Dr. Helms added a wing in 1920 and opened the Bayside Hospital, a small, private and well-respected medical clinic at a time before the opening of Tampa General Hospital on Davis Islands. For eight years the Bayside Hospital served prominent residents of the Hyde Park and Bayshore area. The hospital closed in 1927 and the house became the Helms' residence again. The family owned the home until 1974. The Biglows were influential and important contributors to the growth of early Tampa. As a side note, and of great importance to me personally, is that during the time when most children were often born at home, my mother was one of the lucky few dozen Tampa boys and girls brought into this world by Dr. Helms at the Bayside Hospital. And she was always an extremely proud “Bigelow Baby” and shared this fun distinction with many life-long friends. I hope this peek into Tampa's past (a request actually by LOIS) and look at one of its grand old homes just whets your appetite for more.

It sure beats ordering off the menu. Everytime.

The sun is really beating down and our humidity is climbing. This gentleman knows how to spend his afternoon. He's properly outfitted in his long-billed cap, Guayabera -style shirt, rubber flip flops and dark sunglasses. He's a serious bait hunter and knows what he's after in these shallow waters alongside the sea wall. To be successful at catching some small bait for his fishing on the nearby Ballast Point Pier, this fisherman throws his cast net out onto the water and then pulls it back in with 15-20 feet of line. Small weights help pull the net under the surface and then he ensnares the little guys and hauls them in. It takes several throws to catch enough bait so he can resume his real afternoon's activity of catching dinner-size fish from Tampa's Hillsborough Bay. The city just spent almost $1 million on a major upgrade to the pier's pilings, railings, decking, benches, fish cleaning stations and renovating the shelter area at the end. This concrete dock is at the boat ramp and it too will get a major overall this year allowing for boats to tie-up on a floating dock. A variety of underwater critters can be found in these waters such as crabs, oysters, snook, sheepshead and even the occasional Tarpon. I'll bet that at this moment his catch is sizzling in a hot pan, lemon, butter and fresh tartar sauce - plus a bottle of chilled white wine - set to cook and garnish. Delicious.

Don't Dare Touch My Red chair Again

There aren't many better views of Hillsborough Bay, Davis Islands and the entire downtown skyline in all of Tampa. And, for the cost of a blue (or red) camp chair, and a giant Slurpee, it's free. Relax and enjoy the vista, the cool breeze off the bay, sea gulls swooping in on dinner and long conversation. Now how could life be better? The quiet conversation as you come closer to overhear is Chrysler's bankruptcy, its merger with Fiat, whether the kids' trip to Cancun will be cancelled because of the Swine Flu pandemic (that's it, no more pork chops for you Helen), when WILL they capture Bin Laden (Just send me in after him Ruthie), after we lost all our life's savings we can't even afford another Slurpee and on and on and on. And to think that in our grandparent's day all they worried about was the flu pandemic of 1918, a silly dust bowl, handsome Mr. Coolidge ruining our country and the Great Depression. Isn't life a hoot, Helen. What will this generation think up next? Silly kids.